The big Apple

The legendary R.W. "Johnny" Apple died on Wednesday. The New York Times, predictably has an excellent obituary, both in print:

Drama, and a lot of dash, followed Mr. Apple as night follows day. He was the pool reporter sent to the deck of the U.S.S. Forrestal in 1967 when a fiery accident nearly killed one of the ship’s pilots, Lt. Cmdr. John S. McCain 3d. From that incident he formed a lifelong friendship with the pilot, who went on to become a United States senator.

It was Mr. Apple, or so the legend goes, who told Robert F. Kennedy in 1968 that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been shot. It was Mr. Apple whose relentless questioning elicited from Ronald L. Ziegler, Richard M. Nixon’s press secretary, the admission that his previous explanations about the Watergate affair were “inoperative.”

And in video.

This profile in the New Yorker is fabulous.